IFTA 2026, India’s only people’s choice film and television awards — voting open

Aneet Padda Won by 977 Votes. The Race for Second Was Settled by Seven

By Sneha Arora

Updated on November 3, 2026
IST 10:23 am

Saiyaara’s lead took 35.3% of 3,933 votes. Behind her, four stars finished within seven votes of each other.

A runaway winner and a four-way tie

Eleven actresses were on the ballot for Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Bollywood) at IFTA 2026.

Aneet Padda (Saiyaara) won with 1,389 of 3,933 verified votes, 35.3%. The runner-up, Yami Gautam Dhar (Haq), got 10.5%. The winner’s share was 3.4 times the runner-up’s.

The race for second place was the tightest finish of IFTA 2026:

Yami Gautam Dhar (Haq): 412 votes
Sonam Bajwa (Ek Deewane Ki Deewaniyat): 412 votes
Kriti Sanon (Tere Ishk Mein): 411 votes
Rashmika Mandanna (Thamma): 405 votes

All four got between 10.3% and 10.5%. Aneet Padda got more votes than any three of them combined.

Aneet Padda, winner of Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Bollywood) at IFTA 2026

Who decided it

Every IFTA vote is OTP-verified, one per WhatsApp number per category, and every voter’s age and gender is recorded at sign-up. So this is not a survey sample. It is the full count of who voted.

Women cast 3,103 of the 3,933 votes (79%). Aneet Padda won 37.5% of women’s votes and 27.0% of men’s.
Voters under 25 cast 78% of all votes. The biggest single group was voters aged 18–24 (2,150 votes).
Women aged 18–24 were Aneet Padda’s strongest group: 39.2% of their 1,720 votes went to Aneet Padda.
71% of Aneet Padda’s votes came from women under 25 (984 of 1,389).

Aneet Padda led in every age group with at least 30 voters.

Same winner, different second choices

Men’s second choice was Sonam Bajwa (17.0%), almost twice her share among women (8.8%). Women’s second choice was Rashmika Mandanna (10.8%).

Kajol: 4.6% of women’s votes, 2.2% of men’s, about twice as popular with women.
Janhvi Kapoor: 3.3% of women’s votes, 2.1% of men’s, 1.6 times as popular with women.
Kriti Sanon: 9.5% of women’s votes, 14.3% of men’s, 1.5 times as popular with men.
Kiara Advani: 5.2% of women’s votes, 7.6% of men’s, 1.5 times as popular with men.

Across IFTA 2026

Aneet Padda won twice at IFTA 2026. She was also voted Most Popular Bollywood Debut, with 44.8%, ahead of her Saiyaara co-star Ahaan Panday.

In the voters’ own words

Voters could add a reason with their vote. A few of them:

“Her acting was the best among all other nominations.”
“She is gem 💎”
“Yes very charming”

This is not a ratings chart or a critics’ list. It measures which audience turned up to vote, and how hard.

See the full results

IFTA 2026 voting has closed and the results are in. No jury, no award fixing: every winner was decided by India’s votes. See the full Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Bollywood) result, or all results: Bollywood · OTT · Television

All vote figures from the IFTA 2026 Most Popular Actress in a Lead Role (Bollywood) results on PolBol (3,933 verified votes, results final). Group figures are as published there; combined totals are added up from the published counts. Nominee images: IFTA 2026.